After 16 years of marriage– I get it– my husband and I are very different- or more precisely we have very different ways of demonstrating our love for one another. And yet you’d think I would have made my peace with this and somehow moved on…but I can’t.
I want the entire package, I want the fairytale. I want the guy who, when we’re sitting at a red light in the car, reaches over and takes my hand. I want a man who when I’m standing over the sink loading the dishwasher (I know great visual- eh?!) comes up from behind me and wraps his arms around my waist and envelops me in an embrace.
My husband is a good guy, and he definitely has his moments… but lately I’ve been more cognizant of his real inability to be demonstratively intimate with me and I hate feeling as though this is as good as it gets.
But maybe it is, maybe as a woman I can’t expect my husband to be as openly affectionate with me as I am with him. I know we were raised with diametrically opposing attitudes in regards to love and expressing it. He’s even admitted that the phrase ‘ love you’ was used very sparingly during his childhood and was only unleashed at exceptional occasions, whereas I’ve always said I love you to my family at every conceivable moment I could fit it in.
I get it, we’re different, so does that mean I shouldn’t ask for more and take his actions as a validation of the love he feels for me? Maybe I’m just like that annoying Julia Roberts character in that bubblegum fairytale Pretty Woman… who wants the whole fairytale. Am I?
We all want the fairy tale. Of course, “Fairy Tale” means something a little different to each of us.
I know I never will have the fairy tale and most of the time I’m okay with that, but sometimes, I just wish….
But, remember how he makes your coffee and know just how to do it? =)
A good marriage is about respect, communication, accepting a person 100 percent as-is and keeping the fire alive. I find as we getting older, we aren’t as clinging as we were when we first met. If the hubby stopped telling me each day that he loved me, or stopped giving me hugs when I am not expecting.. then I would worry.